Blindness So Kind
by MoonlightMystery13.3
Summary: It's a warm, sunny morning, and Merlin is determined to just lie there until Arthur comes to drag him out of bed. But then he remembers. Then he /sees/... and wishes to be blind again. Rated T for understandable sadness and depression. No slash, as usual, just a beautiful friendship.


**A/N:** This one also ambushed me, and then grew to be about a thousand words longer than I thought it would be. I've always wanted to try my hand at a post 5:13 fic, and here it is. The quotes are from that episode, and I'm 99.9% sure that they're right. I don't own those, obviously, or anything else you recognize here. Apologies to my Lab Rats readers; I promise I'll get one of the fics I've been promising to you! If you enjoyed this fic, or found a mistake, please review to let me know. It truly makes my day. Thank you everyone, and have a delightful day!

 **Be the reason someone smiles today. :)**

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The cool, uneven floor drew Merlin out of his slumber. Tiredly, he peeled his eyes open, blinking at the sudden light, and trying to lose the last clouds of sleep. He lay, perfectly still but for breathing and blinking, unable to be bothered to actually rise. A patch of sun pooled lazily inches from his nose, glinting off the golden device he'd fallen asleep clutching. Merlin wondered absently why Gaius hadn't woken him; judging by the sun, he'd be late to wake Arthur. Perhaps the physician had simply decided to let the King come and rouse Merlin himself. Merlin smiled sleepily, and shifted his weight off, numb from being slept on all night. He brought his hand up to his face, squinting at it in concern. His hand was covered with an odd pattern of bloodless white lines.

A snake of unease curled in the Warlock's stomach. He was used to sleeping on the floor, so the numb arm did not concern him, but these marks on his hand? They were quite alarming. He wondered if it could be some illness he had yet to encounter. Or maybe this was a plague, or some terrible magical attack. His heart thudded in his chest, and he bit his lip worriedly. He should really go get Gaius. The old man knew more about maladies, magical and otherwise, than anyone else in the kingdom, and if he didn't immediately know, then he would research until he knew precisely what was attacking his ward.

 _But I'd better go ask now, before Arthur gets here. Don't need him worrying needlessly, not that he'd ever admit it, the prat_ , he thought fondly, pushing himself into a sitting position, blinking into the blinding sun, and waiting for his head to stop buzzing. While since the two had met, "prat" had flown one day, and "idiot" the other, the insults had long since lost their sting. They had simply become a joke, an extension of their sometimes playful brotherhood, and a term of endearment, if the two were honest with themselves.

Merlin smiled fondly, despite his concern over his hand, worry receded slightly under the warmth of friendship and sun alike. He knew his room well enough to know that if the sun was where it was, his bed would be right behind him, so without looking, he reached back as he stood to steady himself, shaky after sitting for so long. His hand, expecting solid blanket and mattress, met nothing but air. After pinwheeling slightly, trying to stay upright, Merlin crashed back to the floor, mind in shock. He knew his bed had been there. He'd known it, as sure as he knew that he was Merlin, and Arthur was the Once and Future King, and Gwen was in love with the Prat. So, where was it?

Merlin shook his head, and turned around to look, sun out of his eyes for the first time he'd woken up. He froze, unable to believe what he was seeing. Instead of his bedroom, with its worn walls and floor, cupboard, rickety bed, plants hanging up to dry, and careful sketches of the same hanging with them, this room was entirely different. It was white, walls and floor, and unwelcomingly empty. A bed was there, certainly, in the far corner, a table and chair of a remarkably odd design stood near, and a small room full of strange, shiny metal contraptions faced the table. Glancing at the floor, it was tiny chips of stone laid out flat, not the wooden floor he had. One mystery, the odd lines on his hand, was cleared up, but an even bigger one presented itself insistently: Where on Earth was he? Was he alone, or were his friends also in this strange place? How long had he been here, and how had he gotten here? None of it made any sense.

As he continued to inspect the room, a golden gleam caught his eyes. Lying innocently in the sun lay a golden circle, something that resembled an oversized golden coin. He knelt, looking at it carefully without touching it, not wanting to take the chance in the strange surroundings. He recognized it, vaguely. The rough surface, the engraving of the bird upon it... a dove, his mind somehow knew. Crumpling his brow, and frowning, trying to latch onto the memory that sat just out of reach, he picked the object up.

As his fingers closed around it (Arthur's mother's sigil! How could he have forgotten it?), some dam broke in his mind and memory. Everything, so cloudy and confused, came rushing back. Morgana, Mordred, _Camlan_ all flashed into his mind. Gaius, grave and sad, "I'll have your favorite waiting." and Arthur, oh gods, _Arthur_ , weak and dying but accepting him. "Thank you." Merlin curled into himself, taking his pounding head in his hands, drowning in the knowledge that _Arthur was dead_. Everyone was dead, Gwen, Leon, Gaius, Percival, Gwaine, Will, his parents, Elyan, everyone. They were all dead. Everyone he had loved was, so many times over, his friends in each and every age, all of the fifteen hundred -and it had been that long, hadn't it? How could it have been?- long years had died. He had no one.

Merlin remembered every one of those years, the wandering from place to place, never staying for too long. Years upon years of wars and illnesses, the rise and fall of countless civilizations, many whose names were unknown, lost to time. Just like him. No one knew him here, no one remembered Camelot, not properly. He and Arthur, they were nothing but legends, and this world knew nothing of magic. This world, _modern times_ , it was all wrong, noisy and fast paced, insincere and fake. The world didn't care about honor, or friendship; self-sacrifice and forgiveness were foreign concepts.

He wanted, so much, to just have it all be a nightmare, to go back to sleep, and wake up, and the world to be right again. But no, this was reality, that was the worst part, and Merlin couldn't sleep it away. He couldn't even die. He should have, so many times over the centuries, all the danger he'd put himself in, trying to save others. But Fate had not even been that kind. Merlin had agreed to wait. He would do anything for his friends, for his king, so he would guard the world until Albion called Arthur back. But he had been gone so long and Merlin had seen so many horrors... how much worse would it have to get for Arthur to return? And would Merlin's sanity survive to meet him, even if his body and magic would? Merlin was beginning to doubt it.

He was really beginning to doubt everything. This generation was the first he hadn't attempted to know people in. His heart was too raw from losing everyone he loved that he felt like he simply couldn't love another, not if he was just going to lose them again. He wasn't sure how much longer he could do this. He was starting to wonder if his hope was a false one, if Arthur would not return after all for another fifteen hundred years, if he did at all. Merlin may have been Emrys, but he was a man, too. A brave, magic, loyal man, but a man all the same, and time has a habit of breaking men like twigs, and while he had tried so hard to heed Arthur's command ("Don't change. I want you to always be you."), Merlin could feel himself breaking, changing, slowly, but certainly.

The almighty warlock, the most powerful magic user ever to walk the Earth, lay on the floor of a hotel, in a land he didn't recognize anymore, so sickeningly far away from his time and people, and cried to heart out to the sun. He cried to Albion, for Camelot, shattered and forgotten. He cried for his friends, for the knights he'd loved, for Gwen, for Will and his father and Freya and Daegal and everyone he'd failed to save. He cried for Arthur, poisoned by his father's teachings, motherless, the man with a heart of gold. He cried for everyone he'd known since, for everyone who time had forgotten, but who'd lived, for those in the time he was in, sad, and insecure. He cried for himself, lost, and crumbling, and useless.

Merlin lay there, broken and alone, and lost himself in bittersweet memories and a sea of aching regret.

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As the warlock quietly shattered, losing faith in Albion and himself, a man walked into the hotel lobby. His eyes were blue, his hair golden, and his appearance put together, but slightly disheveled. He'd come from one last fight with his father, a fight where he had rejected his father's ideas, and set out on his own, to find the thing he'd been missing since he was born. His light. His friend. His brother.

Fate carried him to the room across from Merlin's, proving that, perhaps, it is not quite as cruel as man thinks it is. And Albion smiled.

/fin/


End file.
